Monday, April 30, 2007
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Hip Hop Theater Festival
Greetings Folks,
The madness is almost over...
& when it is, you should go celebrate:
The Hip Hop Theater Festival
May 8th- May 20th, 2007
Here is the schedule.
Check it out, yo...
May 8: Total Chaos: Hip Hop Politics
Panel Discussion w/Jeff Chang, Jerry Quickley, Davey D & Others.
YBCA Screening Room:: 701 Mission St @ 3rd, SF:: 6:30 P.M.
FREE
www.ybca.org
May 9: HHTF Kickoff Celebration
Featuring: Youth Speaks’ Brave New Voices College Tour
La Pena Cultural Center:: 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley :: 8 P.M.
$10 General Admission, $5 Students, Youth, Members and Groups
www.lapena.org
May 10: Rude Boy
Featuring Azeem
Intersection for the Arts: 446 Valencia Street, San Francisco :: 7 P.M.
Admission: $5-$15 (under 18 Free)
www.theintersection.org
May 11: Jerry Quickley: Live from the Front
YBCA Forum: 701 Mission St @ 3rd, San Francisco :: 8 P.M.
Admission: $25 general, $21 Students and Seniors, $19 members
www.ybca.org
May 12: Jerry Quickley: Live from the Front
YBCA Forum: 701 Mission St @ 3rd, San Francisco :: 8 P.M.
Admission: $25 general, $21 Students and Seniors, $19 members
www.ybca.org
May 13: Total Chaos; Hip-Hop Literati
Panel Discussion w/ Jeff Chang, Adam Mansbach, and Others.
La Pena Cultural Center:: 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley:: 6 P.M.
FREE
www.lapena.org
May 16: BAY SHORTS #1
An explosive evening of excerpts and works-in-progress from Bay Area Hip-Hop theater artists
Featuring: Headrush and Shanique
La Pena Cultural Center:: 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley:: 6 P.M.
Admission: $12 Adv., $15 Gen, $10 Students, Members and Groups
www.lapena.org
May 17: Suicide Kings: In Spite of Everything
Directed by: Marc Bamuthi Joseph
Exit Theater: 156 Eddy Street, San Francisco:: 8 P.M.
Admission: $12 Gen, $8 Students & Groups
www.ssfringe.org
May 18: Representa!
Written By Paul Flores and Julio Cardenas
Directed by Danny Hoch
La Pena Cultural Center: 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley: 8pm
Admission: $12 Adv., $15 Gen, $10 Students, Members and Groups
www.lapena.org
May 19: Suicide Kings: In Spite of Everything
Directed by: Marc Bamuthi Joseph
Exit Theater: 156 Eddy Street, San Francisco:: 8 P.M.
Admission: $12 Gen, $8 Students & Groups
www.ssfringe.org
May 20: Representa!
Written By Paul Flores and Julio Cardenas
Directed by Danny Hoch
La Pena Cultural Center: 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley: 7 P.M.
Admission: $12 Adv., $15 Gen, $10 Students, Members and Groups
www.lapena.org
Peace
Sunday, April 22, 2007
More Japanese hip-hop video (in English subtitle!)
Dragon Ash
I like the words to respect families and friends.
http://www.youtube.com/v/br8l-uHMYnU
Posted by Tomomi
I like the words to respect families and friends.
http://www.youtube.com/v/br8l-uHMYnU
Posted by Tomomi
Japanese rapper : SDP (sucha dara paar)
Their music video with a combination of the hip-hop and the
Japanese-ness is my favorite.
http://www.youtube.com/v/eIQpjB2T0ME
posted by Tomomi
Japanese-ness is my favorite.
http://www.youtube.com/v/eIQpjB2T0ME
posted by Tomomi
The movie of graffiti from all over the world
Rent the movie, "NEXT: a Primer on Urban Painting," if you are
insterested in how the graffiti art influence the world! It was
amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/v/2H097jwplvs
posted by Tomomi
insterested in how the graffiti art influence the world! It was
amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/v/2H097jwplvs
posted by Tomomi
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
I rap, Iraq
Iraqi/ Canadian Rap artist shares his expeirence with racism, life, and hip hop.
http://www.current.tv/pods/playlist/PD05902
http://www.current.tv/pods/playlist/PD05902
Monday, April 9, 2007
Is Hip Hop Dead
Is Hip Hop Dead
I've heard alot of talk on message boards, in magazines and on TV about hip hop breathing its last breaths, succumbing to the new alternative/rock fusion overtaking mainstream music. Sadly, the latter part of the two is probably true, but when you take into account the material dealt with by these two very different genres, its easy to understand why a radio station and regulatory commissions would much rather have whiny teens banging and crashing their instruments and droning on and on about love, as opposed to the 'straight-from-the-street' art form that deals mostly with daily life for the inner city project dwellers. Some may see this as a bad thing, because air-time obviously means paycheques, which for the most part, help these hip hoppers and rappers put their cd's in stores (and give them a chance to rap about rollin on dubs and ride dirty).
This is a major dilemma confronting the entire urban music industry right now, as the music and subject does sell, they're eternally at the mercy of such critics as the CRTC (in canada) and the FCC (in the U.S.A), not to mention the individual radio stations that choose which content will keep their audience tuned in through the commercial breaks. The artists themsleves could conform to the regulations and change their music to a subject that doesnt deal with their daily life and the daily lives of about 6 million other people in North America, and be branded a sell out; or they could take their music underground, which is not an economically viable option. Either way, hip hop as an art form will never die, as it's the only thing besides crack and heroin that the kids can turn to, to provide a momentary escape from their daily lives.
The all-new hip hopically infused action packed, star studded, musically interactive, street fighting game, Def Jam: Icon, is set for release in mid March through Def Jam Records subsidiary company, Def Jam Interactive in partnership with video game giant, EA sports. The game deals mostly with the 'up-n-comings' of a starry-eyed hip hopper, coming from right from the streets to make it to the big leagues. 'Icon' also gives some big name cameo's from such superstar artists as Big Boi of Outkast and Ludacris. Its yet to be determined whether they're someone whose ass you shall kick, or if they merely provide some comic relief in the form of music in the background. Either way, it'll be worth a laugh or two.
As an interesting spin on what would seem to be an already overdone video game genre, the player chooses the soundtrack best-suited for a particular scenario, which ultimately decides the outcome....that and the big ass fire hydrant laying right in front of you. The rhythm of the music does affect how quickly and smoothly your character moves, so deciding which track may go a step further than which ones sounds the best. Keep your fingers crossed that the boy got game.
- Jooba (HHR)
Posted on February 27, 2007
HipHop and Fixies in Japan
Check this out! Japanese guys emceeing and riding the hottest track bikes.
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Brazil invests in its emerging hip-hop culture
By Larry Rohter
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
SÃO PAULO: In a classroom at a community center near a slum here, a street-smart teacher offers a dozen young students tips on how to improve their graffiti techniques. One floor below, in a small soundproof studio, another instructor is teaching a youthful group of would-be rappers how to operate digital recording and video equipment.
This is one of Brazil's Culture Points, fruit of an official government program that is helping to spread hip-hop culture across a vast nation of 185 million people. With small grants of $60,000 or so to scores of community groups on the outskirts of Brazilian cities, the Ministry of Culture hopes to channel what it sees as the latent creativity of the country's poor into new forms of expression.
The program, conceived in 2003, is an initiative of the Brazilian minister of culture, Gilberto Gil. Though today one of the country's most revered pop stars, Gil, 64, was often ostracized at the start of his own career and so feels a certain affinity with the hip-hop culture emerging here.
"These phenomena cannot be regarded negatively, because they encompass huge contingents of the population for whom they are the only connection to the larger world," he said in a February interview. "A government that can't perceive this won't have the capacity to formulate policies that are sufficiently inclusive to keep young people from being diverted to criminality or consigned to social isolation."
As a result of the Culture Points and similar programs, Gil said, "you've now got young people who are becoming designers, who are making it into media and being used more and more by television and samba schools and revitalizing degraded neighborhoods." He added, "It's a different vision of the role of government, a new role."
As the ministry sees it, hip-hop culture consists of four elements: MCs (rappers), DJs, break dancers and graffiti artists. At the Projeto Casulo, a community center here on a narrow, winding street at the foot of a favela, or squatter slum, all four art forms are being taught to dozens of young residents.
"This program has really democratized culture," Guine Silva, a 32-year-old rapper who is the director of the center, said during a tour of its simple concrete building. "We've become a multimedia laboratory. Getting that seed money and that studio equipment has enabled us to become a kind of hip-hop factory."
Though links to music run strong and deep in Brazilian culture, the notion of using taxpayers' money to encourage rap and graffiti art is not universally accepted. But because Gil's musical judgment is widely respected, the level of skepticism and resistance is lower than might be expected.
"Gil still has to fight against other parts of the government in favor of things that everyone else there thinks are alienating junk, but he's willing to do that, whether it's on behalf of rap or funk or brega," another style of music considered vulgar and lower class, said Hermano Vianna, a writer and anthropologist who works in digital culture programs. "He looks at that sort of thing not with prejudice, but rather as a business opportunity."
On the other hand, some important exponents of hip-hop culture in Brazil, like the rapper Manu Brown and the writer Ferrez, remain skeptical and have chosen to keep their distance from the government program. Others are participating but complain of the bureaucracy involved.
"The idea is great because it has brought about a level of recognition we didn't have before," said the rapper Aliado G., president of an entity called Hip Hop Nation Brazil. "But people get frustrated when a project of theirs is approved and they can't get the money because they don't know how to do all the paperwork."
Brazilian rap, at least as it has developed in poor neighborhoods here in the country's largest city, tends to be highly politicized and scornful of lyrics that boast about wealth or sexual conquests. In contrast, the funk movement in Brazil, also imported from the United States but centered in Rio de Janeiro, is unabashedly about celebrating sex, bling and violence.
"When U.S. rap groups come here and try to be ostentatious or do the gangster thing, they get booed off the stage," Silva said. "We feel a kinship with Chuck D and Public Enemy" — known for their political commentary — "but we don't have any respect for people like Snoop Dogg and Puff Daddy."
Since established commercial radio stations and publishing houses have shown minimal interest in the music and poetry that new hip-hop artists are producing or want to impose contract terms that are too stringent, rappers have developed their own channels to distribute their work. These range from selling their discs and books themselves on the streets and at shows to having the works played on a network of low-power but linked community radio stations.
"There is an entire industry being built in the informal sector," Vianna said. "If you were to apply all the laws in place today, no producer can release a record from a favela. So you have to create a new model, and Gil is willing to do that."
At the Projeto Casulo, the Culture Points program has produced a pair of documentaries about housing problems, complete with a rap accompaniment, that were broadcast on commercial television. The center has also generated a radionovela, a fanzine and a community newspaper, and plans next to set up an online radio station to broadcast the rap songs that its musicians and those at similar community centers here have composed and recorded.
In addition, a Culture Ministry grant enabled Hip Hop Nation Brazil to publish a book called "Hip Hop in Pencil," a collection of rap lyrics. After a first edition of 2,000 copies quickly sold out in 2005 and was nominated for a literary prize, a conventional publishing house was interested enough to negotiate a deal to publish subsequent editions.
Brazilian law also offers tax breaks to companies that contribute to cultural endeavors like films, ballet and art exhibitions. Rap music has now been granted similar standing, and as a result, some of the country's largest corporations have begun underwriting hip-hop records and shows.
At a recent event in Campinas, a city of one million an hour's drive from here, the sponsors included a power company, a bank, a construction business and an industrial conglomerate. As a troupe of break dancers strutted their most flashy moves, DJs and MCs railed against social, economic and racial inequality with lyrics like "Reality is always hard / for those who have dark skin / if you don't watch out / you'll end up in the paddy wagon."
"It took a while for companies to wake up to the potential this offers," said Augusto Rodrigues, an executive of the power company and the director of the cultural center where the show was held. "But there's a hunger for cultural programs like this, in which for the first time in 20 years, the ideology of the periphery can express itself."
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
SÃO PAULO: In a classroom at a community center near a slum here, a street-smart teacher offers a dozen young students tips on how to improve their graffiti techniques. One floor below, in a small soundproof studio, another instructor is teaching a youthful group of would-be rappers how to operate digital recording and video equipment.
This is one of Brazil's Culture Points, fruit of an official government program that is helping to spread hip-hop culture across a vast nation of 185 million people. With small grants of $60,000 or so to scores of community groups on the outskirts of Brazilian cities, the Ministry of Culture hopes to channel what it sees as the latent creativity of the country's poor into new forms of expression.
The program, conceived in 2003, is an initiative of the Brazilian minister of culture, Gilberto Gil. Though today one of the country's most revered pop stars, Gil, 64, was often ostracized at the start of his own career and so feels a certain affinity with the hip-hop culture emerging here.
"These phenomena cannot be regarded negatively, because they encompass huge contingents of the population for whom they are the only connection to the larger world," he said in a February interview. "A government that can't perceive this won't have the capacity to formulate policies that are sufficiently inclusive to keep young people from being diverted to criminality or consigned to social isolation."
As a result of the Culture Points and similar programs, Gil said, "you've now got young people who are becoming designers, who are making it into media and being used more and more by television and samba schools and revitalizing degraded neighborhoods." He added, "It's a different vision of the role of government, a new role."
As the ministry sees it, hip-hop culture consists of four elements: MCs (rappers), DJs, break dancers and graffiti artists. At the Projeto Casulo, a community center here on a narrow, winding street at the foot of a favela, or squatter slum, all four art forms are being taught to dozens of young residents.
"This program has really democratized culture," Guine Silva, a 32-year-old rapper who is the director of the center, said during a tour of its simple concrete building. "We've become a multimedia laboratory. Getting that seed money and that studio equipment has enabled us to become a kind of hip-hop factory."
Though links to music run strong and deep in Brazilian culture, the notion of using taxpayers' money to encourage rap and graffiti art is not universally accepted. But because Gil's musical judgment is widely respected, the level of skepticism and resistance is lower than might be expected.
"Gil still has to fight against other parts of the government in favor of things that everyone else there thinks are alienating junk, but he's willing to do that, whether it's on behalf of rap or funk or brega," another style of music considered vulgar and lower class, said Hermano Vianna, a writer and anthropologist who works in digital culture programs. "He looks at that sort of thing not with prejudice, but rather as a business opportunity."
On the other hand, some important exponents of hip-hop culture in Brazil, like the rapper Manu Brown and the writer Ferrez, remain skeptical and have chosen to keep their distance from the government program. Others are participating but complain of the bureaucracy involved.
"The idea is great because it has brought about a level of recognition we didn't have before," said the rapper Aliado G., president of an entity called Hip Hop Nation Brazil. "But people get frustrated when a project of theirs is approved and they can't get the money because they don't know how to do all the paperwork."
Brazilian rap, at least as it has developed in poor neighborhoods here in the country's largest city, tends to be highly politicized and scornful of lyrics that boast about wealth or sexual conquests. In contrast, the funk movement in Brazil, also imported from the United States but centered in Rio de Janeiro, is unabashedly about celebrating sex, bling and violence.
"When U.S. rap groups come here and try to be ostentatious or do the gangster thing, they get booed off the stage," Silva said. "We feel a kinship with Chuck D and Public Enemy" — known for their political commentary — "but we don't have any respect for people like Snoop Dogg and Puff Daddy."
Since established commercial radio stations and publishing houses have shown minimal interest in the music and poetry that new hip-hop artists are producing or want to impose contract terms that are too stringent, rappers have developed their own channels to distribute their work. These range from selling their discs and books themselves on the streets and at shows to having the works played on a network of low-power but linked community radio stations.
"There is an entire industry being built in the informal sector," Vianna said. "If you were to apply all the laws in place today, no producer can release a record from a favela. So you have to create a new model, and Gil is willing to do that."
At the Projeto Casulo, the Culture Points program has produced a pair of documentaries about housing problems, complete with a rap accompaniment, that were broadcast on commercial television. The center has also generated a radionovela, a fanzine and a community newspaper, and plans next to set up an online radio station to broadcast the rap songs that its musicians and those at similar community centers here have composed and recorded.
In addition, a Culture Ministry grant enabled Hip Hop Nation Brazil to publish a book called "Hip Hop in Pencil," a collection of rap lyrics. After a first edition of 2,000 copies quickly sold out in 2005 and was nominated for a literary prize, a conventional publishing house was interested enough to negotiate a deal to publish subsequent editions.
Brazilian law also offers tax breaks to companies that contribute to cultural endeavors like films, ballet and art exhibitions. Rap music has now been granted similar standing, and as a result, some of the country's largest corporations have begun underwriting hip-hop records and shows.
At a recent event in Campinas, a city of one million an hour's drive from here, the sponsors included a power company, a bank, a construction business and an industrial conglomerate. As a troupe of break dancers strutted their most flashy moves, DJs and MCs railed against social, economic and racial inequality with lyrics like "Reality is always hard / for those who have dark skin / if you don't watch out / you'll end up in the paddy wagon."
"It took a while for companies to wake up to the potential this offers," said Augusto Rodrigues, an executive of the power company and the director of the cultural center where the show was held. "But there's a hunger for cultural programs like this, in which for the first time in 20 years, the ideology of the periphery can express itself."
Another article, a little closer to home
Birth of the Hip-Hop Dynasty: Part One
One sunny day in August, twenty kids in green t-shirts and toothy smiles were finishing bagged lunches at Rancho Peralta Park, when their playground was taken over by a capoeira fighter, an innocuous, four-eyed skateboarder who happens to know kung fu, and the afternoon of battles that ensued.
Dirty Lenz Films
Reviewed by Aaron Shuman
Tuesday, September 5 2000, 11:30 AM
One sunny day in August, twenty kids in green t-shirts and toothy smiles were finishing bagged lunches at Rancho Peralta Park, when their playground was taken over by a capoeira fighter, an innocuous, four-eyed skateboarder who happens to know kung fu, and the afternoon of battles that ensued. The kids, on a field trip from East Oakland's Arroyo Viejo Center, remained riveted to their picnic tables, until adult chaperones pried them, protesting, loose. Lateef, the capoeirista, was from San Jose; Pitt, the dreadlocked Clark Kent, from Milwaukee; the camera crew following their every move, from Oakland. For them, it was just the latest day in a six-years-and-counting odyssey to shoot a trilogy of films named Birth of the Hip-Hop Dynasty.
For Phillip Colas (Professor Pitt) and Ricardo Pruett of Dirty Lenz Films, the hip-hop dynasty begins and ends with the kids. "I decided to make movies when my sons were playing Conan the Barbarian and running around with mops on their heads, screaming, I'm Conan," recalls Colas, 27. "I said, 'Okay, but realize you're an African-American Conan.' They couldn't accept that. They kept saying, 'There aren't any African-American superheroes.' They shut me up. And when a 3 or 4 year-old shuts you up, that's deep."
To create a hero for his children, Colas returned to a childhood spent watching Black Belt Theatre and going to the local kung-fu theatre. "Going to early kung-fu with my brother meant everything to me," he says. "You had people doing stuff that was superhuman, but the reality was that they were human, not Superman. They were a superhero you could become."
Colas began writing his first film in 1996. He knew the rudiments of shooting video and had made a name for himself in Milwaukee with his hip-hop video show, The Zone, on public access TV. Colas started The Zone in 1994 when his group, Pitt and da Pendulum, couldn't get adequate airtime on any local show.
"On my show you can be the person you are, or the person you are on the album," says Colas. The combination of candid interviews with stars such as Wu Tang, KRS-One, and Chuck D; practical advice for aspiring stars on surviving the business or starting one's own; and videos from Cream City hustlers made The Zone a local hit. The show was syndicated to Chicago and Berlin, before Pitt pulled it to concentrate on moviemaking.
So Colas became screenwriter, "producer, director, caterer," editor, and publicist for Part One of Birth of the Hip-Hop Dynasty, in which he acted both the good son (Pitt) and bad father (Evil Professor). Lest this sound like a vanity project, know that while father may whoop son, the ancestors materialize to bring all their asses back in line, in a vision of an Afrocentric universe where "mental fitness" requires Pitt to work through stances in time with a lecture on the Ethiopian Empire from a Dr. Gross. This being hip-hop, the wise men who direct Pitt to Dr. Gross are the Jungle Brothers, backstage at the Hieroglyphics show. And so the movie goes, through a number of chance encounters and choice battles, filmed with the jaw-dropping camera angles and eye-popping effects Colas first used to make The Zone stand out to channel surfers. A soundtrack runs the full length of the film, wherein screams are transformed via echo chamber into electronic smears or turntable scratches, and chaos resolves into a circle of handclaps and drumming. A hat thrown in the air, through the magic of stutter frame photography, becomes the "Jamaican death hat technique," capable of boomeranging and knocking someone upside the head. Electronic-age inventiveness creates a universe of proudly Black magic that earns its tagline, "historically, the first Afrikan-American hip-hop kung-fu movie."
Colas brought the film to the Bay last fall, for its only screenings outside Milwaukee, at the Justice League and Oakland's Black Dot Cafe. He says, "In Milwaukee, you have to be up on TV. If it ain't on TV, people won't support it. The Bay Area, you get out there and people wanna help. If your shit is good, people try to help you."
On this trip, Colas met his partner in Dirty Lenz Films, Ricardo Pruett. Pruett, 37, a musician and videomaker himself, recalls, "We met in a drum circle at Golden Gate Park. Pitt was doing martial arts with fans, doing it like a dance. I wanted to learn how to do what he's doing, so I asked him about being in a music video of mine." The rest is history.
Besides freeing Pitt from many of the technical duties, Pruett has been instrumental in lining up the Oakland talent that will comprise the majority of the cast for Part Two, currently transforming parks throughout Oakland into stagesets and theaters to demonstrate arts to kids. The new movie has been deeply shaped by their time here.
"I was approached by an Asian woman at a party with the Hieroglyphics," Colas recalls. She said, "I don't know that I wanna buy your movie because you're exploiting my culture." But martial arts is based on certain key stances, and these stances are chiselled on pyramid walls. I'm recognizing the African-American in Chinese cultures [and vice versa]. This new movie will feature people of color in their own communities, doing what they do, who pull their styles out when needed. So you can see how they blend together."
Waiting out the Screen Actors' Guild strike to appear in Part Two is Master Sultan Uddin, his own success story in the making. Before he was 21, he became the first African American to master eskrima, the Phillippine art of stickfighting. After years of study, teaching, fighting, and service as a bodyguard, Master Sultan became a consultant for Hollywood's growing, Hong Kong-fueled fascination with martial arts. Called onto the set of Mortal Kombat 2 to advise, he realized, "They didn't know eskrima. They didn't know capoeira. I know how to make capoeira flow with all the arts, because that's what I did as a bodyguard." Master Sultan walked off with a role in the movie, and credits for the video game and TV show.
Now he is working to bring the movie industry to Oakland, where the wealth of ethnic dance and martial arts styles at venues like the Alice Arts Center, the well-developed networks for independent hip-hop and film, and the proximity to Hollywood all offer opportunity to the enterprising cineaste. With Pitt, he agrees, "This is gonna be the year," when major projects jump off, adding, "There are very few African-Americans doing this. But I've seen a huge influx into independent film. We have the demand. The technology is available for us to do it ourselves. So we need to get our talents together and do it."
One sunny day in August, twenty kids in green t-shirts and toothy smiles were finishing bagged lunches at Rancho Peralta Park, when their playground was taken over by a capoeira fighter, an innocuous, four-eyed skateboarder who happens to know kung fu, and the afternoon of battles that ensued.
Dirty Lenz Films
Reviewed by Aaron Shuman
Tuesday, September 5 2000, 11:30 AM
One sunny day in August, twenty kids in green t-shirts and toothy smiles were finishing bagged lunches at Rancho Peralta Park, when their playground was taken over by a capoeira fighter, an innocuous, four-eyed skateboarder who happens to know kung fu, and the afternoon of battles that ensued. The kids, on a field trip from East Oakland's Arroyo Viejo Center, remained riveted to their picnic tables, until adult chaperones pried them, protesting, loose. Lateef, the capoeirista, was from San Jose; Pitt, the dreadlocked Clark Kent, from Milwaukee; the camera crew following their every move, from Oakland. For them, it was just the latest day in a six-years-and-counting odyssey to shoot a trilogy of films named Birth of the Hip-Hop Dynasty.
For Phillip Colas (Professor Pitt) and Ricardo Pruett of Dirty Lenz Films, the hip-hop dynasty begins and ends with the kids. "I decided to make movies when my sons were playing Conan the Barbarian and running around with mops on their heads, screaming, I'm Conan," recalls Colas, 27. "I said, 'Okay, but realize you're an African-American Conan.' They couldn't accept that. They kept saying, 'There aren't any African-American superheroes.' They shut me up. And when a 3 or 4 year-old shuts you up, that's deep."
To create a hero for his children, Colas returned to a childhood spent watching Black Belt Theatre and going to the local kung-fu theatre. "Going to early kung-fu with my brother meant everything to me," he says. "You had people doing stuff that was superhuman, but the reality was that they were human, not Superman. They were a superhero you could become."
Colas began writing his first film in 1996. He knew the rudiments of shooting video and had made a name for himself in Milwaukee with his hip-hop video show, The Zone, on public access TV. Colas started The Zone in 1994 when his group, Pitt and da Pendulum, couldn't get adequate airtime on any local show.
"On my show you can be the person you are, or the person you are on the album," says Colas. The combination of candid interviews with stars such as Wu Tang, KRS-One, and Chuck D; practical advice for aspiring stars on surviving the business or starting one's own; and videos from Cream City hustlers made The Zone a local hit. The show was syndicated to Chicago and Berlin, before Pitt pulled it to concentrate on moviemaking.
So Colas became screenwriter, "producer, director, caterer," editor, and publicist for Part One of Birth of the Hip-Hop Dynasty, in which he acted both the good son (Pitt) and bad father (Evil Professor). Lest this sound like a vanity project, know that while father may whoop son, the ancestors materialize to bring all their asses back in line, in a vision of an Afrocentric universe where "mental fitness" requires Pitt to work through stances in time with a lecture on the Ethiopian Empire from a Dr. Gross. This being hip-hop, the wise men who direct Pitt to Dr. Gross are the Jungle Brothers, backstage at the Hieroglyphics show. And so the movie goes, through a number of chance encounters and choice battles, filmed with the jaw-dropping camera angles and eye-popping effects Colas first used to make The Zone stand out to channel surfers. A soundtrack runs the full length of the film, wherein screams are transformed via echo chamber into electronic smears or turntable scratches, and chaos resolves into a circle of handclaps and drumming. A hat thrown in the air, through the magic of stutter frame photography, becomes the "Jamaican death hat technique," capable of boomeranging and knocking someone upside the head. Electronic-age inventiveness creates a universe of proudly Black magic that earns its tagline, "historically, the first Afrikan-American hip-hop kung-fu movie."
Colas brought the film to the Bay last fall, for its only screenings outside Milwaukee, at the Justice League and Oakland's Black Dot Cafe. He says, "In Milwaukee, you have to be up on TV. If it ain't on TV, people won't support it. The Bay Area, you get out there and people wanna help. If your shit is good, people try to help you."
On this trip, Colas met his partner in Dirty Lenz Films, Ricardo Pruett. Pruett, 37, a musician and videomaker himself, recalls, "We met in a drum circle at Golden Gate Park. Pitt was doing martial arts with fans, doing it like a dance. I wanted to learn how to do what he's doing, so I asked him about being in a music video of mine." The rest is history.
Besides freeing Pitt from many of the technical duties, Pruett has been instrumental in lining up the Oakland talent that will comprise the majority of the cast for Part Two, currently transforming parks throughout Oakland into stagesets and theaters to demonstrate arts to kids. The new movie has been deeply shaped by their time here.
"I was approached by an Asian woman at a party with the Hieroglyphics," Colas recalls. She said, "I don't know that I wanna buy your movie because you're exploiting my culture." But martial arts is based on certain key stances, and these stances are chiselled on pyramid walls. I'm recognizing the African-American in Chinese cultures [and vice versa]. This new movie will feature people of color in their own communities, doing what they do, who pull their styles out when needed. So you can see how they blend together."
Waiting out the Screen Actors' Guild strike to appear in Part Two is Master Sultan Uddin, his own success story in the making. Before he was 21, he became the first African American to master eskrima, the Phillippine art of stickfighting. After years of study, teaching, fighting, and service as a bodyguard, Master Sultan became a consultant for Hollywood's growing, Hong Kong-fueled fascination with martial arts. Called onto the set of Mortal Kombat 2 to advise, he realized, "They didn't know eskrima. They didn't know capoeira. I know how to make capoeira flow with all the arts, because that's what I did as a bodyguard." Master Sultan walked off with a role in the movie, and credits for the video game and TV show.
Now he is working to bring the movie industry to Oakland, where the wealth of ethnic dance and martial arts styles at venues like the Alice Arts Center, the well-developed networks for independent hip-hop and film, and the proximity to Hollywood all offer opportunity to the enterprising cineaste. With Pitt, he agrees, "This is gonna be the year," when major projects jump off, adding, "There are very few African-Americans doing this. But I've seen a huge influx into independent film. We have the demand. The technology is available for us to do it ourselves. So we need to get our talents together and do it."
FINALLY I CAN POST!!! (thank you fredrick!)
Ok, now that i can post I can finally share everything i have, starting with my "past incarnation" about how hip hop dance movement relates to Capeoria (a passion of mine)
peace,
~Samantha
Capoeira and Break-Dancing
By Julie Delgado, WireTap
Posted on April 1, 2000, Printed on April 7, 2007
http://www.wiretapmag.org/stories/87/
"A community that doesn't have a ritual cannot exist." -- Malidoma Patrice Some
Hollow back to a head spin into a leg sweep, followed by some old, next-type floor work. Slick's fast moves all seem like a routine he choreographed with his boy who moves in perfect sync with him. The music that accompanies what seems like an impromptu battle isn't Hip Hop, and despite a few recognizable moves, these guys definitely aren't breaking -- they're playing capoeira. If you've ever followed breaking, been to a house club or to Brazil, chances are you've heard of or seen the dance-fight-looking art that many believe to be either the cousin, once removed or father of breaking's movement and flow.
Many art voyeurs agree that the similarities in movement and energy between capoeira and breaking seem endless -- whether this is coincidence or continuity remains disputed. While breaking has been at the forefront of Hip Hop culture for close to 30 years, the last five years or so have put capoeira, an age-old Brazilian martial art form, on the tip of everyone's tongue.
For a seasoned perspective in my quest for answers, I went to reps from both camps: Furacao of Abada-Capoeira and Ken Swift of Rock Steady Crew. Furacao a.k.a. Freddy Correa of Washington Heights, lived in Brazil for three years studying intensively at Mestre Camisa's Academy. He now teaches in New York City at Martin Luther King, Jr. High School, Hunter College and Manhattan Center High School of Science and Mathematics. Recently, he won the title of Best Foreign Player at the Second World Games in Rio de Janeiro in 1999. Ken Swift a.k.a. Kenny Gabbert is a veteran breaker and international performer who some say reintroduced footwork into the '90s breaking scene. He has judged international breaking competitions and now teaches at Multicultural Dance Ensemble in Spanish Harlem. What I found in these conversations, despite the technical differences and separation in the time-space continuum, is that both grew from a need in oppressed peoples to use creativity to react to life as they knew it. Both forms were created among people with their minds in the same place in their respective worlds: locked down, hemmed up and assed out.
"Capoeira e defesa ataque, e ginga de corpo e malandragem." Loosely translated, this song warns us that capoeira is a game of defense and attack; rocking of the body and trickery. It seems only right that this would be a mantra for a game that originated in slavery. When Brazil was founded in the 1500s, capoeira as we know it began to take shape. There are many theories as to how capoeira came to be and was able to survive in the face of slavery, although no one knows for sure due to the secrecy imposed on its practice. Many accounts propose that slaves disguised their fighting games as a dance so slave masters would not see that in actuality, they were cleverly training themselves in an art that could disarm, confuse and defeat an opponent of any size-without weapons. Others suggest that this was impossible because not all slaves were free to practice their arts, coupled with the fact that slave traders separated Africans from the same region to minimize the chances of a rebellion. In spite of this, it established for slaves a symbol of and weapon for their freedom. Capoeira, like many cultures of subversion, owes its existence and increasing popularity to its ability to morph throughout the years while keeping the integrity of its philosophy intact. As Furacao recounts, "There is a saying in capoeira, 'Capoeira is like a chameleon -- you change only to preserve your essence.'"
Over the course of time, instruments were added to the game to complete the camouflage of this lethal martial art: the berimbau (a stringed instrument made of a gourd, a piece of wire, string and a bow), the atabaque (drum), the pandeiro (tambourine) and sometimes, the reco-reco, the caxixi and the agogo (a two tone bell.)
With the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888, many slaves went on to live in slums and established shantytowns. Since the planters no longer required the services of ex-slaves as workers, many organized into criminal gangs for survival. In time, due to the threat that capoeiristas posed to the government, laws were passed attempting to extinguish capoeira and expatriate its practitioners. These laws were still in effect as recently as 1920.
As outlaws, it was common for capoeiristas to have various monikers to highlight their individual skills and characteristics while ingeniously concealing their true identity. Capoeira finally received approval from the Brazilian government when Manoel Dos Reis Machado, a.k.a. Mestre Bimba, (founder of Regional style) was invited to do a presentation for government officials in 1932.
Today, capoeira has evolved into various societies. The two forms that have spread the world over are Regional and Angola. In the interest of brevity, I will skim the seemingly bottomless pot of their main distinguishing factors. Angola is a very slow game -- the players play very close to the ground and to each other. Some societies are known to wear yellow and black. Regional is a faster game with flashier movements. Regional schools often practice both styles and the players traditionally wear white and play with bare feet, keeping with Yoruba tradition. Maintaining a clean white uniform also serves to reflect a player's skill, since they avoid being knocked to the ground. The Regional system has incorporated awarding belts, as in other martial arts, according to a player's level of skill.
When the players begin a roda, the circle in which the game is played, the Mestre (master), sets the rhythm, or pace of the game, with the berimbau, which is considered the heart of capoeira and indispensible to all societies. The capoeiristas in the circle begin to clap and everyone sings the song, following in the African tradition of call and response. The two players pay respect to the berimbau, then crouch underneath it waiting for their cue to play. They shake hands and move into the center of the roda. There, the players combat in an intricate dialogue of kicks, fakes and esquivas (dodges -- there are few blocks in capoeira), each taunting and attempting to confuse the other player. The game is fueled by the energy of the roda's players and the rhythm and mood of the song that the berimbau player has set. Furacao explains, "the roda is a traditional manifestation found in a lot of other African rituals. The roda's where you close in the energy ... it's where people pay respect to the musicians ... that's how you circle in the vibe. Ciphers, for people doin they Hip Hop, when people are dancing in a club, when they rhyming -- that's how you get that human energy." Here, we begin to see one of several parallels between breaking and capoeira.
Capoeira made its debut in NYC in the early 1970s with Jelon Viera and Loremil Machado, so the probability of their knowledge of each other is pretty substantial. Furacao talks about the early days of capoeira in New York City: "They didn't have instruments, so they would do capoeira presentations for money ... and that was in 1975 and breakdancing evolved around 1979/1980 ... They would first come out, do their solos, so you could see where maybe the uprock came from, probably from the ginga [the basic upright movement of capoeira]. Right there you could go into a floor movement ... queda de rins [the baby], where they freeze on the floor. Head spins [piao de cabeca] -- these movements in capoeira, they go back ... They're both beautiful art forms."
Ken, however, never witnessed it: "In '78 I started and I didn't see it [capoeira] til '92 ... I was around, too -- I was in Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, I went around and I didn't see it. What we saw was Kung Fu-we saw Kung Fu from the 42nd Street theaters. So those were our inspirations... when we did the Kung Fu shit we switched it up and we put this B-boy flavor into it, this stick-up kid flavor into it... That was a rule: make it yours, don't just do it ... Now a lot of people are doing exactly what a capoeira person would do, they're just doing it different ... I respect capoeira to the fullest, man ... I think it goes back to all the African stuff ... people will argue me to death about it ... it's a part of breaking now and I can't deny that ... similar moves like the leg sweep [corta capim] and the babies [queda de rins] are similar."
Capoeira's influence on modern day breaking is undeniable, but Ken feels it has posed a problem for breaking. Many so-called breakers today aren't dancing, but just going into a circle and doing power moves they've learned- many resembling certain moves in capoeira-with no footwork, freezes or flow, which are essential to the art (you know who you are). In Ken's experience, moves in early breaking developed without any knowledge of capoeira, although both sides pay respect where it's due to the African-rooted traditions in both forms. Capoeira survived for hundreds of years through community and innovation until Mestre Bimba, set up the first formal academy in 1927. In the same vein, breakers learned and created with what they had, drawing inspiration from their world and each other.
Innovative early breakers like Ken Swift also created a dance vocabulary of their own in a time and place that didn't provide inner-city kids with other outlets for expression and a sense of accomplishment. Ken said at one point, "This is our world -- this is what made me so interested in being a part of it. There was nothing my mother, my teacher, the governor, the president- anybody could say about what I did on that floor at that time." In the tradition of both forms, we see that innovation comes from being forced to look within when circumstances offer no alternative. But due to a lack of understanding among some newbies, the creative values are being lost.
For early breakers, there were very few outreach programs, and the few that did exist didn't necessarily appeal to most kids. We all know about the socioeconomic situation of early breakers. As Ken says, "It was crews, but there were some violent kids on these crews. The kids I met were notorious, I mean they stuck stores up ... that's what I was into too." Althoughbreakers were never systematically outlawed or physically enslaved as were capoeiristas, early breakers were heavily policed and mentally enslaved. If capoeira provided its founding players with a symbol of freedom, what did breaking do for its innovators? "Deep inside I really feel like it was part of being tough. I think it was part of being in the street and being hard ... You remember the old MC traditions? The MCs was about fantasizing about having the money and the cars. It was an important thing to do-it got you by dreaming of those things ... If I wasn't doing a lot of that shit man, I would be in big trouble ... It was so important just to be occupying time buggin out like that and believing in myself in that fashion ... Seeing these kids, man, it's like I know what they feel. They're standing up for theirs -- and there's more things involved than just the opponent and music. There's girls, there's prestige, there's that rumor -- that great street rumor: 'Yo, dis nigga blazed'-that notoriety."
Early breakers created a world where they could be rich and GQ smooth, if only for a minute, in a city that squelched any hopes of actually attaining these dreams. Within a culture of their own making that encompassed music, dance and lyrics reflecting life as they lived it, they made a name for themselves and got the fame they sought among their people. As in capoeira, where players are baptized with a nickname for use among their peers, breakers got their own nicknames. Swift's given name of Kenny Gabbert does him no justice among those who know who he really is: Ken Swift, the rocker with fast feet and fly moves. These aliases often reflect the esteemed traits that keep the oppressed going in their own communities; those traits that aren't openly praised by the world outside. Just like malandro, or trickster in Portuguese, words like "trouble" and "crazy" have good connotations in a culture that subverts the plans their world has for them.
Ken remembers that, "The earliest breakers heard songs, memorized the lyrics to them -- the earliest rockers, I should say -- and sung those songs as they rocked. They acted out those lyrics and sung and did the same emotion as the vocalist along with the music ... and the vocalist stopped and the drum came on strong -- this is the essence [of breaking]." By acting out lyrics that speak of the life they lived breakers worked out the tension between their reality and their aspirations, along with capoeiristas who have been doing the same for hundreds of years.
Each culture's existence has depended on its ability to transform and adapt; both incomprehensible to the mind's eye of outsiders who had no need for such outlets, they kept tradition alive within. While capoeira's lethal qualities were camouflaged with instrumentation for survival in the times of the slave trade, breaking faced culture's modern day nemesis: capitalism. As Ken recounts, "I think the institutions, they try to get a grasp on it ... We grew up like this and they tryin to put a tag on what we do-boom- then market it, and then when its finished, throw it out the window ... 'Let's not watch someone dance to the beat, let's show them on their head, upside-down'. That's the part that all directors, producers and filmmakers wanted to see. "In spite of the media's distortion of breaking's true nature, presenting it as a series of stunts, true breakers managed to keep the dance innovative and fresh.
To excel in each art, it is important to keep each art in the context of history and tradition, the very traditions and values which have kept them alive. "When you do capoeira, you have to learn the music, the art, where it comes from and you understand more of the art when you understand the culture ... [Capoeira] is something that exercises the mind, your mental, your coordination," says Furacao, "In life sometimes, you have to make decisions fast, you don't have time to procrastinate." As for breaking, "You've gotta have an understanding of music and you gotta understand the context ... You gotta know your music-this is the way you learn about what moves you ... and you'll see in your dance how you react to the beats ... You gotta know the history of the dance to be a good breaker ... You gotta dress like a B-boy and you gotta dress like a B-girl." Ken adds the point of fashion consciousness not to undermine the dancing, however. Some are fashion conscious and don't know how to break, so don't try it. In other words, Ken's added emphasis on fashion is important in that it should be functional and compliment the dance.
On a personal level, both art forms seem to play the role of a protective big brother who beats on and taunts you to toughen you up for struggles he knows you'll have to face, but bigs you up when you start coming into your own. "I found that breaking ... [has] always been a place for me to get it [any hardship] off my chest, a place for me to challenge myself. It's taught me how to look at the bigger picture rather than winning and losing. It's taught me how to look at what the real important things are ... It taught me about getting up off the ground, it taught me about perseverance ... I've had the ability to adapt. That has been the key to my success 21 years down the line. When I really enjoy music I feel unstoppable," says Ken.
For Furacao, "It showed me that my boundaries are infinite; if I think it I can do it ... It's taught me about myself: about my fears. Sometimes you're thrown in a situation and you can't go back and then you challenge yourself."
Through the music and foundation from which the movement of each form was born, each player gains perspective on themselves and the worlds they live in: regardless of the size or skill of the opponent either in the roda or on the dance floor, or the obstacle in life, if he or she is prepared and puts aside their fears, they can accomplish anything; support they didn't find in the world around them.
Furacao affirms that "These art forms are African-rooted, so it's all one love- we all come from the same roots no matter what. It's not a thing of class or conflict or battle ... it just shows the beauty and the power of African tradition and how it has evolved over the years." Ken recalls one time:
"While I was breaking there [in front of the Graffiti Hall of Fame] early in the afternoon, some built Spanish kid came to me and was like 'Yo, wassup?' He ... started doin capoeira ... and I was like 'Yo, that shit is phat and we started bugging out, no premeditated shit ... Music's playing, he starts showing me this flip, I started showing him this thing I do and it was just so real. I mean, I'm standing on a concrete park with projects surrounding me and this tradeoff of culture, this tradeoff of energy ... It was so raw, but it was love, you know-ain't no beef. A capoeira nigga'd probably beat the shit out of a breaker when it came down to it, but a breaker'd probably outdance the shit of a capoeira person in their realm. So there's two different purposes, you know?"
Whether the relationship of the two forms is that of distant cousins or of father and son, it seems we can only speculate. Though they came to be hundreds of years and thousands of miles apart, both cultures maintain the traditions of the African Diaspora: movement as a vehicle for mental transcendence, oral history, respect to musicians and transgression of oppressive circumstances. Although about 500 years have passed since the advent of capoeira, and although the face of the world has changed tremendously, the predicaments that people continue face haven't. People continue to struggle with inequality, ignorance and the circumstances in the world around them. Issues of trickery/trust, egotism/humility and overconfidence/foresight still remain in everyone's personal cipher. Capoeira and breaking created a space to play out these basic issues that are often the focal points of people in a systematic, mental lockdown, both teaching their artists the ability to transform and adapt to any situation with their own personal style.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
check check !
.............................................
there is a change in date for
dialects of the heart opening:
saturday, april 7th, 2007.
peace & blessings
............................................
Monday, April 2, 2007
Dialects of the Heart
April 6–May 6, 2007
Corazón del Pueblo
4814 International Blvd.
Oakland
Reception with Spoken Word 6pm- 9pm on April 6
We each speak our own particular dialect in the expression of art, as well as through the paths we come from and the ones we choose to traverse. As a collective, we are using these dialects to construct bridges between us, by connecting and manifesting a passage of communication to understand one another innately. In Dialects of the Heart, the Cohort comes together in celebration and illumination of our discourse, as we continue to work to make our vocabulary whole. As we have all given a window of ourselves for you to look within, we hope you will come open as we welcome you into our co-heart.
Dialects of the Heart is an exhibition examining cultural identities using diverse perspectives and aesthetics; posing provocative questions concerning time, place, and identity. This exhibition has been created and curated by the Center Student Cohort.
The Center is facilitating the Student Cohort, funded by the James Irvine Foundation. CCA is committed to increased diversity within the student body population. In support of this, the Center Student Cohort is comprised of historically underserved student groups, specifically African American, Latina/o, Native American, and Pacific Islander. Areas of focus include academic and professional achievement, leadership development and financial assistance.
*check it out
Corazón del Pueblo
4814 International Blvd.
Oakland
Reception with Spoken Word 6pm- 9pm on April 6
We each speak our own particular dialect in the expression of art, as well as through the paths we come from and the ones we choose to traverse. As a collective, we are using these dialects to construct bridges between us, by connecting and manifesting a passage of communication to understand one another innately. In Dialects of the Heart, the Cohort comes together in celebration and illumination of our discourse, as we continue to work to make our vocabulary whole. As we have all given a window of ourselves for you to look within, we hope you will come open as we welcome you into our co-heart.
Dialects of the Heart is an exhibition examining cultural identities using diverse perspectives and aesthetics; posing provocative questions concerning time, place, and identity. This exhibition has been created and curated by the Center Student Cohort.
The Center is facilitating the Student Cohort, funded by the James Irvine Foundation. CCA is committed to increased diversity within the student body population. In support of this, the Center Student Cohort is comprised of historically underserved student groups, specifically African American, Latina/o, Native American, and Pacific Islander. Areas of focus include academic and professional achievement, leadership development and financial assistance.
*check it out
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